A blistering row has reignited between leading French novelists Marie Darrieussecq and Camille Laurens over a two-year-old accusation of literary plagiarism.

The two writers both publish books this month drawing on the quarrel, which kicked off in 2007 after Laurens accused Darrieussecq of "psychological plagiarism" in her novel Tom est mort (Tom is Dead). Darrieussecq's novel was about the accidental death of a four-year-old, related by his mother 10 years later; Laurens said it contained echoes of her 1995 memoir Phillippe, about the death of her own son. "I had the feeling, in reading it, that Tom est Mort had been written in my room, with [her] arse on my chair or sprawling in my bed of grief," Laurens wrote at the time. She was subsequently dropped by the editor the two authors shared.

Now Darrieussecq has opened the floodgates again, last week publishing a study of writers accused of plagiarism and telling French press in fiery terms about the rage she felt at Laurens's accusation – an attempt, she said to "symbolically assassinate" her. For her part, Laurens publishes a novel this week, Romance nerveuse (Nervous Romance), a story about an author who is dropped by her editor after accusing a rival of plagiarism, and then finds it difficult to continue writing.

"There is a moment when you have to get angry in order to survive. I wrote this book as a kind of therapy and to help future writers who are accused," Darrieussecq told L'Express. The book, Rapport de police: Accusations de plagiat et autres modes de surveillance de la fiction (Police Report: Accusations of Plagiarism and other modes of fiction surveillance), "talk[s]" about people who commit suicide because of this kind of accusation" she said to Le Nouvel Observateur. "Fortunately, I have strong nerves."

Darrieusecq said she had found that writers throughout history, from Émile Zola to Daphne du Maurier, had suffered similar attacks. "I am in a huge rage, and I feel that my honour as a writer has been maligned," she told L'Express. "This is the first time in my life that I have written a book without any pleasure."

Although Darrieussecq wasn't interested in plagiarism, she felt "obliged" to write the book as she had been accused twice of plagiarism – the first time was in 1998 by last year's Goncourt prize winner Marie NDiaye. "Slander tends to feed on itself," she told Le Nouvel Observateur. "I have discovered that literature is a very unwelcoming place."